


hydrogen cyanide cocktail

by forfree



Category: RPF - Fandom
Genre: Cheating, F/M, break-up, ohohohohooo this is gonna HURT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2016-12-14
Packaged: 2018-09-07 18:21:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8811316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forfree/pseuds/forfree
Summary: "Was it worth it? Would you do it again?"





	1. trophy case filled with them accolades

Jordan drives home from work at twelve o’clock in the morning. It’s now technically Tuesday. He got to work Monday morning and worked so hard that he didn’t notice how much time had passed. He’s used to that, though; he’ll always work hard for his wife and child, even if they do have enough money in the bank to last them about two lifetimes.

 

He almost falls asleep at the wheel twice, but he ends up making it home safely. When he walks inside, he sees wife Beyoncé sitting on the couch looking right at him.

 

“Hey, babe,” Jordan says, tiredness evident in his voice. He hopes that the sound of his voice doesn’t fool her; he’s happy as ever to see her, she’s the only thing that keeps him sane besides their child JJ. Both of them are the only things he lives for, they’re his world.

 

“Where’ve you been, Jordan?” Beyoncé asks, sounding as if she’s at the end of her rope.

 

Jordan takes a seat next to Beyoncé. “I was working,” he answers, trying to give Beyoncé a kiss.

 

She moves away and gets straight to the point. “How do I know that, though? What sense does it make for you to stay at work this long?”

 

“Beyoncé, I work hard so I can be sure that you and JJ are fine, don’t do this right now, please, I just wanna spend a little time with you,” Jordan replies, his tone sleepy and desperate. He stands up and goes upstairs to the bedroom he shares with Beyoncé, taking his shirt and his shoes off.

 

Beyoncé’s in the room with him in no time. “Don’t you tell me what to do, Jordan. I have a right to be paranoid. You know how much you’ve been telling me you’ve been staying up in that god damned office? It’s been three days.”

 

“You can ask anyone you want, they’ll tell you exactly what I’m telling you,” Jordan says.

 

Beyoncé wordlessly takes her shirt and her shorts off and changes into a silk slip dress. Jordan watches her silently, wearily. All he wants to do is hold her and fall asleep next to her like he would on a normal night, but it’s quickly becoming evident that this night is far from normal.

 

Beyoncé turns to Jordan. “I shouldn’t have to fucking ask around to see where you’ve been, Jordan. You should be home with me,” she says shortly.

 

Jordan sits next to her on the edge of the bed and looks at her face; when she’s not smiling it’s almost as if she’s a stranger to him, and seeing her look worn out because of him makes him feel absolutely terrible.

 

“Tell me what you want me to do, baby. You know I don’t like seeing you unhappy,” Jordan tells her. He can’t bring himself to look her in the eye. Despite having done nothing, he feels an overwhelming sense of guilt.

 

She says something in reply and he accidentally tunes her out. He can’t help but to observe how beautiful she is; he always finds himself doing that, even at the worst times. Her delicate features are framed with beautiful black hair. When she put it in a bun, she’d left a few strands out. They barely touch her collarbones. The soft skin there is bruised, and Jordan’s brow furrows.

 

He cuts her off. “What happened?” His thumb brushes over the bruises and his eyes finally meet hers.

 

A look of unmistakable panic floods Beyoncé’s face, and she fails her attempt at trying to look unmoved. “Jordan, I…”

 

“Beyoncé,” Jordan starts, his voice uncharacteristically quiet and his anxiety growing by the second. “Just tell me what happened.”

 

“Nothing, just an accident,” Beyoncé says after a long pause. It’s now her turn to avoid Jordan’s gaze.

 

“Beyoncé, please,” Jordan begs, his voice filled with quiet and haunting dread. He’s not brave enough to say anything else he wants to say.

 

“I told you, nothing happened,” Beyoncé snaps.

 

The last time Jordan and Beyoncé slept together, they were coming from a date the week before. Jordan realizes that a lot can happen in a week.

 

Jordan’s breath gets caught in his throat. “Who was it?” he asks in a whisper, shaking his head. “It wasn’t me, so who was it?”

 

Beyoncé looks down. “You already know him. We went out for lunch, and I don't know how it happened, but we ended up sleeping together, and I regret-”

 

Jordan lets out a short laugh of disbelief and goes to dig in his drawers for a pack of cigarettes he’d left there. He’d bought them a few weeks ago, almost giving into opening them when he’d been stressed. The only thing that had stopped him was him remembering how much it would hurt Beyoncé if he started smoking again.

 

Now that she’s hurt him, he figures there’s nothing wrong to going back to old habits to hurt himself a little more. He finds the pack and goes out onto their balcony, lighting a cigarette and looking up, seeing a dark sky speckled with stars. He wants to be angry, but feelings of disillusionment and heartache shroud any anger that could be bubbling up. His eyes prick with tears; he almost never cries.

 

He hears Beyoncé’s quiet footsteps behind him and doesn’t look her way.

 

“Jordan, I’m sorry, I-”

 

Jordan takes a drag on his cigarette and shakes his head. After minutes of silence, he finally speaks. “Let me ask you something, babe.”

 

“Go ahead,” Beyoncé says quietly.

 

“Why couldn’t you have told me I wasn’t making you happy?” he asks, his back still turned to Beyoncé.

 

“Jordan, you make me so happy, don’t say that,” Beyoncé says.

 

Smoke creeps out of Jordan’s nose and mouth as he talks. “I obviously don’t. I didn’t love you enough, you felt like you had to go and find love from someone else, I get that, but why couldn’t you have told me?”

 

“Jordan, I don’t know what to say,” Beyoncé tells him, sounding shaken and dejected.

 

Jordan turns to her, eyes brimming with hot tears. “Find something to say to this: What was I to you? Did I just somehow become a burden? Were you just here to use me? Was I really that much of a fucking dummy to you? Was I so fucking dumb to the point where it made you think you could get away with guilting me for some dumb shit like working too late while you were running around fucking someone else behind my back? Tell me, I wanna know.”

 

As he looks at her, he sees that she’s hurt, fearful, even. It pains him deeply and he wants to be able to overlook how she feels, but he can’t, even though his feelings in this situation come first and not hers. He doesn’t care if she used him; he’d let her use him time and time again if it made her happy because he loves her so much. He figured that she’d never hurt him, though, and that’s what gets him the most.

 

Beyoncé speaks quietly. “Jordan, tell me how to fix this. I’m sorry, I don’t wanna hurt you ever again, I swear,” she pleads.

 

“How am I supposed to know that? You weren’t thinking about me when you fucked him,” Jordan says shakily, grabbing his wife by her shoulders. His voice softens when he looks her in the eye. “I fucking loved you. And I still love you, but I loved you so fucking much. When I first saw you, when we were together and I hadn’t even thought about marrying you yet, while the last words of my vows came out of my fucking mouth, I knew I would love you until the day I died. I would’ve given so much for you, and I still would, but now I don’t even know if you would do the same-”

 

“I would, I would,” Beyoncé cuts off desperately. “I swear on my life, I would.”

 

“Let me finish,” he says, his cheeks wet with tears. “Please, let me fucking finish. I obviously did something wrong along the way. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I fell short. I’m sorry that I’m not good enough for you to want anymore. I wish I could fix it, but I probably don’t have to worry about that. You have someone who’s doing things better for you.”

 

Beyoncé breathes out a shaky sigh. “Jordan, please don't say that.”

 

Jordan takes his cigarette out of his mouth and stubs it out on the balcony railing. "Remember when you would always tell me I needed a break? Were you trying to tell me that you wanted a break from me? 'Cause you sure did take one.” He tosses the stubbed out stick, watching it fall stories below him until it’s not visible anymore.

 

“Jordan, I don’t know what else to do other than apologize, I love you so fucking much-”

 

“No, you don’t!” Jordan exclaims. “You don’t, you fucking don't, otherwise this wouldn’t be happening to me right now. I would be sleeping next to you, and then the next day, I would wake up, go to work, come home, and then sleep next to you again. Everything would be okay, and the only thing we’d fight about is what restaurant we should go to on a date. But that’s not happening.”

 

Beyoncé tries to kiss him and he doesn’t stop her, but there’s nothing for Jordan to give and she doesn’t push any further. She wipes at his face. He doesn’t move away.

 

“I loved you so much, you don’t get it,” Jordan starts. “But I don’t know what to do. I think-”

 

Beyoncé shakes her head. She hasn’t cried the entire time, but Jordan can tell she’s a wreck, too. “I’m so sorry.”

 

Jordan takes a deep breath. “I think I need to take a break,” he says, walking back inside to put decent clothing on.

 

“Jordan, I don’t-”

 

He goes downstairs and grabs his keys from the spot where he’d left them when he first came in. “I’ll be back sometime soon to get my stuff and talk about JJ. Don’t worry about finding another place.”

 

With that, he walks out of the door and gets into his car. He drives to a friend’s house after calling and asking to stay the night, and on the way there, he finally lets himself cry as much as he wants. He feels utterly useless; he feels as if he’s an old toy that got abandoned in favor of a newer, more interesting one that a child received for Christmas. If this situation were a different kind, he’d never doubt himself like this. He’s always been the type of person to ooze confidence, so much so that people began to dislike him because they perceived him to be self-centered. He was the exact opposite, especially when it came to his wife.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

When he gets to his friend’s home, he doesn’t talk much about what’s going on. All he does is thank them for letting him crash there for a while before he lying on the sofa and staring at the ceiling. At this point, he’s cried out, all he can do is turn the night’s events in his head over and over until it makes him sick.

 

Jordan’s friend comes into the room with a cup of coffee and sits in a chair across from the sofa. “What’s on your mind?”

 

Jordan blinks, quietly searching for words to say that aren’t, “Shut the fuck up, my wife never actually cared about me, leave me alone,” and shaking his head. “Nothing, really,” he answers.

 

“You sure?” his friend presses.

 

Jordan nods. “Yeah, it’s nothing.”

  



	2. beyond guessing that i'm beyond desperate

When Jordan comes home three days later, Beyoncé is sleeping fitfully on the couch with a baby monitor next to her. Jordan closes the door behind himself quietly and stares at her. The bruises on her neck are almost gone and he wishes he could be happy at that, but the circumstances that caused them make his stomach turn.

 

He’s tired. Everything’s drained him, from not being with his wife to her being with someone else in his absence. He goes upstairs and sees JJ fast asleep in her crib. He smiles at how peaceful she looks, but his smile fades when he realizes that she has her mother’s hair and cheeks.

 

He steps into the bathroom, peeling his shirt off and looking at himself in the mirror; he has bags under his eyes and he looks pathetic. He’d cry for himself again, but he doesn’t even have the strength to do that.

 

He takes the rest of his clothes and steps in the shower, hissing in pain at the painfully hot water that hits his skin. He fixes the temperature and stands under the water, letting his head hit the wall with a dull thunk. He feels as if he’s barely there, like he’ll fade away if he stops trying so hard to keep himself grounded.

 

As he cleans himself up, he gets soap in his eyes and rushes to rinse them out. Compared to everything else that's happened to him lately, his burning eyes aren't much.

 

He hears the soft click of the bathroom door closing and his heartbeat quickens. He already knows who it is, and he doesn't know what he’s going to do. Beyoncé steps in the shower behind him. He feels her eyes boring into him, but he's too afraid to turn around.

 

“Jordan,” Beyoncé starts.

 

Jordan simply shakes his head. Beyoncé sighs and the strong, clean smell of his shampoo fills the air. Her hands are in his hair; even though he expected it, he still jumps at the contact.

 

She works the shampoo into a lather, and he closes his eyes as she scratches at his scalp. When she's finished, she helps him rinse his hair, making him turn to face her. He looks at her, eyes red from soap, crying, and lack of sleep. He searches her eyes for some sign of hurt. She looks more regretful than anything, like she wishes she hadn't gotten caught, and he’s only hurt more.

 

“Jordan,” Beyoncé begins, delicately scratching at the hair on his face. “What have I done?”

 

“You fucking know,” Jordan says, trying to sound plain. Sincere spite can be heard in his voice regardless, even if it is subtle.

 

Beyoncé turns to step out of the shower at that, but Jordan grabs her hips while she’s still within arm’s reach and pulls her back to him.

 

At this point, the feelings of anger he’d not had previously are bubbling up. His and Beyoncé’s bodies fit together as usual, and it makes Jordan sick.

 

He feels Beyoncé’s shoulders shake as she cries. He holds her still yet, not feeling as much remorse for making her feel the way she does.

 

“Why'd you do it?” he asks, chest pressed against her back.

 

She halfheartedly struggles against him quietly speaks between sniffs. “Fuck you, Jordan.”

 

“Fuck me, huh? You’ve already made that clear, Bey,” Jordan says with a spiteful chuckle.

 

“Jordan, I fucking mean it, go to hell. I tried so hard with you! I know I made a fucking terrible mistake, you don't have to act like this,” Beyoncé says tearfully.

 

“Oh, but I do,” Jordan says, leaning down to kiss her cheek before turning her around so that she can look at him. “This could’ve been avoided, all you had to do was close your fucking legs. Looks like we both had things we just had to do, huh? Especially you.”

 

“Jordan, I mean it, fuck you,” Beyoncé spits. She turns away, but doesn't walk out.

 

Jordan grabs her waist and pulls her closer. “Was he better than me? I’m dying to know.”

 

“I don't fucking know,” Beyoncé says rudely.

 

“You don't?” Jordan asks incredulously.

 

Beyoncé lets her head rest on the shower wall. “No.”

 

Jordan moves closer, pressing his body against hers. “What a shame.”

 

“Jordan, I...” Beyoncé trails off. She shifts her hips, moving against Jordan deliberately.

 

“I’ll ask again,” Jordan says into her ear, his hands resting on the wall above her head. “Was he better than your own fucking husband?”

 

Beyoncé stays silent.

 

Jordan breathes out a heavy, aggravated sigh. “Tell me what you fucking want.”

 

Beyoncé’s fist slams against the wall in anger. “I want you! I fucking want you, and you don’t want me back because I fucked up.”

 

“You don’t have anyone else to get angry at but yourself,” Jordan tells her.

 

“Fuck me, I know, don’t you fucking tell me,” Beyoncé says bitterly.

 

“Last time, Beyoncé. This is the last fucking time, baby,” Jordan replies, kissing down Beyoncé’s shoulder.

 

“Please,” Beyoncé breathes out. Her head falls back onto his shoulder.

 

“Let me jog your fucking memory, Mrs. Ullman.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“What day was it?” Jordan asks.

 

Beyoncé’s legs are wrapped around Jordan’s waist. She’s got her arms around his neck and he holds her still while he fucks her. Their bodies are slick from the warm water they were under a short while ago.

 

“Doesn’t fucking matter anymore,” Beyoncé says quickly. Her sentence is followed by a harsh squeak when Jordan digs his fingers into her thighs.  
The sounds of running water and the sounds coming from Beyoncé’s mouth are so contradictory to Jordan; both are supposed to put him at ease, but one succeeds and the other drives him away while making him want more of it.

 

He pushes Beyoncé down against him with every thrust, going deep and taking his time.

 

“You’ve caused me so much fucking heartache,” Jordan groans into her ear regretfully. “You know that, baby? The past three days I’ve been doing nothing but thinking about you- thinking about how you hurt me, thinking about how I love you, thinking about how I don’t know what to do with you.”

 

Her head falls to his shoulder. “Please,” she whines.

 

“Please, please. That’s all you can say to me-” Jordan’s voice gets increasingly rougher as he continues. “Fuck, shut up. ‘Please,’ and ‘Don’t make me feel bad for fucking around behind your back,’ and-”

 

“Shut the fuck up,” Beyoncé says, clenching around him and moaning. Jordan breathes out a heavy sigh.

 

“You’d love that, wouldn’t you?” Jordan asks with malice, stopping everything he’s doing to suck angry, red marks into Beyoncé’s neck. He breaks small veins and capillaries as he chooses. Everything about Beyoncé is breakable, that’ll never change; she sighs and grabs a fistful of his hair.

 

He prays that the bruises are a shock to her, that she sees them and thinks of him, which she will. Their eyes haven’t met in the longest, and everything about them seeing each other like this feels dirty and wrong to Jordan. He turns her around, pressing her against the steam-covered glass of the shower door, sinking back into her easily.

 

She’s wet and warm, and touching her is all Jordan wants to focus on. Sadly, his mind is everywhere. It’s especially on the fact that nothing is truly promised to him, not even the woman he loves most. His thrusts are rough, and the heightened sound of his skin meeting hers should excite him, but it doesn’t.

 

Sure, fucking her is something he’ll never turn down, but it’s not the same for him now. They haven’t shared one real kiss the whole time, he can’t tell her how much he adores her, how happy he is to be with her. Those feelings and wants aren’t his to act on anymore. All he feels is spite, regret, and hurt.

 

He places a hand against Beyoncé’s stomach and lifts her up off of the wall while he fucks her. He listens to her short, quick breaths; he takes in her cries and moans when he alternates between rolling his hips and changing up the pace altogether.

 

“Tell me, did he do it for you like this?” Jordan asks through gritted teeth, wrapping one arm around her shoulders and using his free hand to grab her hip so hard that he thinks he might leave a bruise or two. All Beyoncé can do in reply is moan Jordan’s name in desperate tones. “Still can’t tell me whether or not his sorry ass outdid me, huh?”

 

He knows the answer to his own question; of course he did, some useless and meaningless fling doesn’t have shit on him. He knows that she’s aware of the fact, too.

 

“Jordan, it’s you, it’s always you,” Beyoncé says.

 

“Not always,” Jordan replies. He tilts his head, kissing along her cheek until his lips meet hers.

 

Their kiss is filthy, open-mouthed, lacking love. Beyoncé moans into Jordan’s mouth.

 

“I’m about to-” she begins to choke out.

 

Jordan interrupts. “Go ahead.”

 

With a few more lazy, deep strokes, Beyoncé comes, her cries higher-pitched and almost indistinguishable because so much is going on at once. Jordan pulls out with a sigh, leaning against the wall and stroking himself. Beyoncé watches wordlessly; he rests his head on the shower wall, ragged moans coming from his parted lips as he comes undone. He straightens up and stands under the now-cold stream of water until he’s clean.

 

“Come here,” Jordan says, his voice a little rough.

 

Beyoncé listens, coming over to him and letting him put his arms around her without uttering a single word. They stand there for what feels like hours before Jordan kisses her on the forehead and steps out of the shower.

 

He puts his clothes on and gets a few of his things. Beyoncé sits on the bed in a silk robe Jordan bought for her years ago. They share a weary, disheartened look.

 

“We had a good run- while it lasted, anyway,” Jordan says as he grabs his wallet off of the dresser.

 

Beyoncé nods quietly.

 

“See you,” Jordan says in a hushed tone, taking his wedding ring off and putting it next to Beyoncé on the bed.

 

Beyoncé looks as if she’s about to break down, and Jordan looks at the floor while she speaks. “See you, J.”

**Author's Note:**

> bitch this fic was inspired by an rp i did with some friends about a month ago, K.I.D's rework of I Want You To Know, Babylon by SZA and Kendrick Lamar, and Curl Up and Die by Relient K, have fun feeling like garbage bitch


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